He lay still, finally. Beside Tommy, fingers locked around Tommy’s arm. Perhaps Tommy wasn’t dead. Tommy would wake up, and they would search this place together. Perhaps that’s what they were supposed to do. There was a way out, and the others meant for him to find it; they meant him to walk through the valley of death to find it, but they didn’t mean to kill him, not his brothers and sisters in the Order, not Elvera, dear Elvera, and Harberson and Enzo, and his old teacher Clermont. No, they were incapable of such things!
At last he turned over and climbed to his knees, but when he tried to rise to his feet, his left ankle gave out from under him in a flash of pain.
“Well, I can crawl, damn it!” he whispered. “I can crawl!” He screamed the words. And crawl he did, pushing the bones away from him, the debris, the crumbled rock or bone or whatever it was. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about rats, either. Don’t think!
His head was suddenly struck, or so it seemed, by a wall.
Within sixty seconds he had traveled along that wall, and along another and another, and finally another. The room was no more than a shaft, it was so small.
Oh, well, don’t have to worry about getting out, it seems, not till I feel better and I can stand up and look for some other opening, something other than a passage, a window perhaps. After all, there’s air, fresh air.
Just rest awhile, he thought, snuggling close to Tommy again, and pressing his forehead against Tommy’s sleeve, rest and think what to do. It is absolutely out of the question that you could die like this, you, this young, die like this, in this dungeon, thrown here by a pack of evil old priests and nuns, impossible…. Yes, rest, don’t confront the entire issue, just yet. Rest …
He was drifting. How stupid of Tommy to have utterly alienated his stepmother, to have told her he wanted no further contact. Why it would be six months, a year even … No, the bank would be looking for them, Tommy’s bank, his bank, when he didn’t draw his quarterly check, and when was that? No, this couldn’t be their final decision, to bury them alive in this awful place!
He was startled wide awake by a strange noise.
Again came the noise, and then again. He knew what that was, but he couldn’t identify it. Damn, in utter darkness, he could not identify even the direction. He must listen. There was a series of sounds, actually, picture it, try to picture it, and then he did.
Bricks being fitted into place, and mortar troweled over them. Bricks and mortar, high above.
“But that’s absurd, absolutely absurd. It’s medieval, it’s utterly outrageous. Tommy, wake up. Tommy!” He would have screamed again, but it was too humiliating, that those bastards up there would hear him, that they’d hear him roaring as they bricked up the bloody door.
Softly, he cried against Tommy’s arm. No, this was temporary, a contrivance to make them miserable, contrite, before turning them over to the authorities. They didn’t mean for them to remain here, to die here! It was some sort of ritual punishment and only meant to frighten him. But of course, the awful part was that Tommy was dead! But still, he’d be glad to say that this had been an accident. When they came, he’d be entirely cooperative. The point was to get out! That’s what he’d wanted to do all along, get out!
I can’t die like this, it’s unthinkable that I should die like this, it’s impossible, all my life forfeit, my dreams taken from me, the greatness I only glimpsed with Stuart and with Tessa …
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew there were awful flaws in his logic, fatal flaws, but he continued, constructing the future, their coming, telling him they had only meant to scare him, and that it had been an accident, Tommy’s dying, they hadn’t known the drop was so dangerous, foolish of them, murderous, vengeful liars and fools. The thing was to be ready, to be calm, to sleep perhaps, sleep, listening to the sounds of the brick and the mortar. No, these sounds have stopped. The door is sealed, perhaps, but that doesn’t matter. There have to be other ways into this dungeon, and other ways out. Later he’d find them.